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English lesson plan · 11th grade (Year 12 in England) · 30 minutes

Purpose and function of sentences (SAT)

Reading Comprehension

CCSS RI.11-12.5CCSS RI.11-12.6England: SAT Reading and Writing (Text Structure and Purpose)

Objective and success criteria

Students will: Purpose and function of sentences (SAT).

  • I can answer questions on today's skill on my own, without help.
  • I can explain each step and say why it works.
  • I can check my answer and spot a mistake.

Before and after

Needs first: Analysing structure

Leads to: the next skill in this area.

Materials: A short text or extract (one copy each), Highlighters, Question cards, Mini whiteboards, A short model text on the board, Printed student sheet (below).

Warm-up · 4 min

  • Quick retrieval from earlier learning (Analysing structure). Students answer on mini whiteboards.
  • Show answers together and note who needs support in the main task.
  1. A story ends with the same image it began with: an empty swing moving in the wind. What is this structure called, and what is its effect? (a flashback, explaining the past / a cliffhanger, leaving the reader in suspense / a cyclical structure, suggesting that little has changed or that events repeat / a list, giving many examples) → a cyclical structure, suggesting that little has changed or that events repeatPrompt: How is the information organised?
  2. An article opens with the story of one family who lost their home in a flood, then broadens to national flood statistics, and ends with proposed solutions. Why might the writer begin with one family's story? (to confuse the reader / to engage the reader emotionally before presenting wider facts / to avoid giving any facts / to show floods are rare) → to engage the reader emotionally before presenting wider factsPrompt: How is the information organised?
  3. A story begins: "By the time the police arrived, the window was already broken." It then goes back to the morning to explain what happened. Which structural technique is used? (a list structure / a circular structure / starting near the end, then using a flashback / strict chronological order from the start) → starting near the end, then using a flashbackPrompt: How is the information organised?

Hook · 3 min

  • Read the first lines of a short text aloud and ask what students predict will happen and why.
  • Share the objective: Purpose and function of sentences (SAT). Read the success criteria together.

I do: model it · 7 min

  • Work through the example out loud, saying why you do each step, not just what you do.
  • Example: [1] The novelist rarely describes her characters' appearance. [2] Instead, she reveals them through small gestures — a tapped spoon, a glance away. [3] Readers thus come to know the characters as they would real people. Which choice best describes the overall structure?
  • Step 1: Text structure is how a writer organises ideas.
  • Step 2: So the answer is: It identifies a technique, illustrates it, and explains its effect.
  • Answer: It identifies a technique, illustrates it, and explains its effect.
  • Pause after each step and ask a student to say what comes next.

We do: guided practice · 6 min

  • Do these together. Students try each step on whiteboards before you reveal it.
  • Use the hints as prompts rather than giving the answer.
  1. [1] Many cities are replacing grass verges with wildflowers. [2] The change saves money on mowing. [3] It also supports pollinators such as bees. What is the main purpose of the text? (to criticise wildflower planting / to explain how bees make honey / to describe a change and two of its benefits / to argue that grass is better) → to describe a change and two of its benefitsPrompt: How is the information organised?
  2. [1] Many assume that deserts are lifeless. [2] In fact, the Sonoran Desert is home to thousands of plant and animal species. [3] Some, like the saguaro cactus, can live for over 150 years. Which choice best describes the function of sentence 1? (It provides evidence for the main claim. / It summarises the whole text. / It presents a common belief that the text then challenges. / It introduces a specific species.) → It presents a common belief that the text then challenges.Prompt: How is the information organised?

You do: independent practice · 7 min

  • Students work on the student sheet. Circulate and check the first two answers of every student early.
  • Students who finish: write a question of their own for a partner, with the answer.

The 6 questions are on the student sheet below, with answers in the key.

Exit ticket · 3 min

  • Two questions on their own. Sort answers into got it / nearly / not yet to plan the next lesson.
  1. [1] Many assume that deserts are lifeless. [2] In fact, the Sonoran Desert is home to thousands of plant and animal species. [3] Some, like the saguaro cactus, can live for over 150 years. Which choice best describes the function of sentence 1? (It provides evidence for the main claim. / It summarises the whole text. / It presents a common belief that the text then challenges. / It introduces a specific species.) → It presents a common belief that the text then challenges.Prompt: How is the information organised?
  2. [1] The novelist rarely describes her characters' appearance. [2] Instead, she reveals them through small gestures — a tapped spoon, a glance away. [3] Readers thus come to know the characters as they would real people. Which choice best describes the overall structure? (It identifies a technique, illustrates it, and explains its effect. / It argues that the novelist is unpopular. / It tells a story in chronological order. / It compares two novelists.) → It identifies a technique, illustrates it, and explains its effect.Prompt: How is the information organised?

Watch out for

  • Answering from memory or opinion instead of evidence in the text.
  • Copying a long quote without explaining what it shows.

Support and stretch

Support

  • Review first: Analysing structure.
  • Use concrete materials: a short text or extract (one copy each).
  • Give the first step of each question, or a partly worked example to finish.
  • Pair with a confident partner for the guided practice.

Stretch

  • Explain a common mistake in writing and how to fix it.
  • Write a word problem that uses today's skill, then solve a partner's.

Homework and more practice

Free online practice with hints and printable worksheets for this skill: eurekami.com/english/grade-11.

Free lesson plan from eurekami.com/lesson-plan-builder

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Purpose and function of sentences (SAT)

Name

Date

Score/ 6

The Quiet Infrastructure

When we speak of infrastructure, we tend to picture concrete and steel: bridges, railways, power lines. We rarely think of the public library. Yet libraries are a form of infrastructure as essential, in their way, as any road – and, because their work is quiet, they are easier to neglect. Consider what a library actually provides. It offers free access not only to books but to the internet, to printers, to warm and safe space, to help with forms and applications, to activities for toddlers and to company for the isolated elderly. For a student without a quiet room at home, it is a study hall. For a job-seeker without a computer, it is an office. For a newly arrived family, it may be the first public institution that welcomes them without asking anything in return. Critics argue that, in an age of smartphones, these functions are obsolete. Information is everywhere; why fund buildings full of paper? But the argument confuses access to information with access to opportunity. A phone cannot print a CV, provide a warm room on a winter afternoon or offer the patient guidance of a librarian who can tell a reliable source from a persuasive fake. Moreover, millions of people still lack reliable internet at home. To assume that everyone is connected is to design policy for the comfortable and forget the rest. None of this means libraries should stand still. The best have already transformed themselves into community hubs, hosting coding clubs, repair cafés and citizenship classes. But transformation requires investment, and investment requires us to recognise libraries for what they are: not a nostalgic luxury, but part of the foundation on which a fair society is built. A bridge that collapses makes headlines. A library that closes rarely does. Its users simply scatter, each a little more alone than before. That silence is precisely why we should pay attention.

  1. Question 1

    Read "The Quiet Infrastructure". What is the function of the list in paragraph 2?

    • A. to criticise library users
    • B. to show the wide range of people libraries serve
    • C. to compare libraries with bridges
    • D. to describe the layout of a library

Two Views on AI and Art

Text 1. When photography was invented, some painters declared that art was dead. Instead, painting changed: freed from the need to record reality, artists explored colour, emotion and abstraction. Image-generating AI may play a similar role. Used as a tool, it can help people sketch ideas quickly, test compositions and bring visual thinking to those who never trained as artists. The question is not whether AI will end art, but what new kinds of art people will make with it. Text 2. Comparisons with photography are tempting but misleading. A camera records the world; many AI image tools are trained on millions of existing artworks, often without their creators' permission or payment. Until artists can choose whether their work is used, and are fairly credited, it is hard to call this simply a new tool. The problem is not the technology itself but the way it has been built.

  1. Question 2

    Read "Two Views on AI and Art". How does each text end?

    • A. Both end with statistics.
    • B. Both end by reframing the debate: Text 1 asks what new art will be made; Text 2 locates the problem in how AI is built.
    • C. Both end by agreeing completely.
    • D. Text 1 ends with a story; Text 2 with a joke.

Two Texts on Memory

TEXT 1 For much of the twentieth century, many people imagined memory as a kind of recording device. An experience, according to this view, was stored somewhere in the brain like a film on a shelf; remembering meant taking the film down and playing it again. Forgetting was simply the film fading with age. This model was appealing because it matched how memory often feels: vivid, detailed and certain. TEXT 2 Decades of experiments have undermined the idea that memories are fixed recordings. In one well-known type of study, participants watch a video of a car accident and are later asked how fast the cars were going when they "smashed" or when they "hit" each other. Those who heard "smashed" not only gave higher speed estimates but were more likely, a week later, to report seeing broken glass – although there was none in the video. Such findings suggest that each act of remembering is partly an act of reconstruction, shaped by later information, expectation and language. A memory can feel certain and still be wrong.

  1. Question 3

    Read "Two Texts on Memory". What is the function of the final sentence of Text 2?

    • A. to describe the video in detail
    • B. to support the recording model
    • C. to introduce a new experiment
    • D. to state a key implication of the research

The Gettysburg Address (Abraham Lincoln, 1863)

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

  1. Question 4

    Read "The Gettysburg Address (Abraham Lincoln, 1863)". How does the speech move through time across its three paragraphs?

    • A. from the nation's past founding, to the present war and ceremony, to the future task
    • B. from a personal story to a list of statistics
    • C. from the future to the past
    • D. it stays entirely in the present

  1. Question 5

    [1] The novelist rarely describes her characters' appearance. [2] Instead, she reveals them through small gestures — a tapped spoon, a glance away. [3] Readers thus come to know the characters as they would real people. Which choice best describes the overall structure?

    • A. It compares two novelists.
    • B. It argues that the novelist is unpopular.
    • C. It tells a story in chronological order.
    • D. It identifies a technique, illustrates it, and explains its effect.

The Quiet Infrastructure

When we speak of infrastructure, we tend to picture concrete and steel: bridges, railways, power lines. We rarely think of the public library. Yet libraries are a form of infrastructure as essential, in their way, as any road – and, because their work is quiet, they are easier to neglect. Consider what a library actually provides. It offers free access not only to books but to the internet, to printers, to warm and safe space, to help with forms and applications, to activities for toddlers and to company for the isolated elderly. For a student without a quiet room at home, it is a study hall. For a job-seeker without a computer, it is an office. For a newly arrived family, it may be the first public institution that welcomes them without asking anything in return. Critics argue that, in an age of smartphones, these functions are obsolete. Information is everywhere; why fund buildings full of paper? But the argument confuses access to information with access to opportunity. A phone cannot print a CV, provide a warm room on a winter afternoon or offer the patient guidance of a librarian who can tell a reliable source from a persuasive fake. Moreover, millions of people still lack reliable internet at home. To assume that everyone is connected is to design policy for the comfortable and forget the rest. None of this means libraries should stand still. The best have already transformed themselves into community hubs, hosting coding clubs, repair cafés and citizenship classes. But transformation requires investment, and investment requires us to recognise libraries for what they are: not a nostalgic luxury, but part of the foundation on which a fair society is built. A bridge that collapses makes headlines. A library that closes rarely does. Its users simply scatter, each a little more alone than before. That silence is precisely why we should pay attention.

  1. Question 6

    Read "The Quiet Infrastructure". Why does the writer include paragraph 4?

    • A. to list the opening hours of libraries
    • B. to argue that libraries should stay exactly as they are
    • C. to show that supporting libraries is not the same as resisting change
    • D. to criticise coding clubs

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Answer key: Purpose and function of sentences (SAT)

  1. 1. B. to show the wide range of people libraries serve

  2. 2. B. Both end by reframing the debate: Text 1 asks what new art will be made; Text 2 locates the problem in how AI is built.

  3. 3. D. to state a key implication of the research

  4. 4. A. from the nation's past founding, to the present war and ceremony, to the future task

  5. 5. D. It identifies a technique, illustrates it, and explains its effect.

  6. 6. C. to show that supporting libraries is not the same as resisting change